Chapter Text
Ko…to…ne…
Her body was being pulled from all angles. Her limbs felt stretched to their limits. Never had her mouth felt so dry, her throat so yearning for moisture.
Ko…to…ne…
Move. She needed to move. She began to notice her aching neck, arched down to the behest of gravity. Her arms felt sore and numb all at the same time. These were only the dullest aches, for now she could feel the burning sensation of a rope-like material burning around her wrists. These chains that had held her in place for so long at this point were by now glued to her skin. Raw skin.
Kotone…
It was the first thing she had heard for a long time. Next came the wind, faint at first, but working itself up decibel by decibel. Then, slowly, she understood this wind was in fact her own breath.
After regaining control of her lungs, she forced her eyes open to find a figure standing in front of her. Standing was the wrong word. It was more like… floating? It was hard to tell through the misty fog surrounding everything.
Her throat was too dry to make any noise apart from a sort of rough, high-pitched whine. This apparently took too much energy, and her gaze fell down along with her eyelids.
Kotone, can you hear me?
She inhaled deeply, fighting against her exhaustion to once again open her eyes. She used the tiniest amount of muscles she could muster to squint, to make more sense of this strange figure.
Do you see me?
Dizziness set in the moment she tried to lift her head up. It warped the figure in front of her in different directions, so that the form resembled less of a human and more like a mythical creature. Everything was still blurry and hazy. She let out another sound, this time more guttural, more forceful.
The more she thought about what to ask this thing in front of her, the dizzier she felt and the quicker she lost her short-carriage train of thought. Who are you? Where am I?
Kotone, I’m here.
Before she had any more time to process these questions raging in her head, a white flash appeared before her, and it sent her back into whatever state of being she had been in before.
&
20??.??.??
It felt easier to open her eyes now. She felt feather-light, a stark contrast to how she felt… a second ago? A minute, an hour, a day?
Fog blanketed her surroundings and the light was dim, but she could still make out bits and pieces around her. She first noticed how the color blue enveloped the room; the walls, the floor, the ceiling. More importantly, it enveloped three silhouettes in front of her.
She opened her mouth to speak, but she was quickly interrupted.
“Do you know where you are, Kotone?” The shortest figure asked, his arms in a tent in front of his face.
Kotone squinted. An answer immediately exited her mouth, though it was hard to tell where it came from. “The Velvet Room.” For some reason, her mind felt at home here, like everything all of a sudden… just made sense. She knew she had a connection to this place.
It had been so long since she last spoke. Her eyes widened in surprise at herself.
“And you remember who you are?”
She nodded slowly.
“And so you must remember the contract you signed.”
For a brief moment, she really didn’t. Then it clicked. “I chooseth this fate of mine own free will." Past tense. She chose – had chosen – her fate. Her death. It was weird, but this didn’t feel like being dead. Not that it felt like being alive. She could feel her lungs fill and deflate over and over again, how they once used to. She could feel her skin. She was free to move. But there was something missing…
“There must be a way to send her back.” The woman - her name was Margaret, right? - broke her intense gaze away from Kotone and instead faced the short… man? Creature?... who Kotone remembered by the name of Igor.
Send her back? Back? Back to life? Or back to being the Great Seal? Kotone fixed her gaze to a spot on the polished floor.
“Is life anything more than coincidence after coincidence? Do we carve our own future, or have our stories already been written?” Finally, the figure most familiar to Kotone, Elizabeth, spoke. When Kotone looked up, she realized that she had a small smile on her face.
“Clearly we didn’t expect Theo to…” The taller woman trailed off.
Theodore? What had he done? Kotone’s eyes widened, scanning the small room for any sign of him – nothing, no one except for his two sisters and Igor. Kotone gulped. Was he the figure she saw? Her mind began racing. He must have saved her from Nyx, from Erebus, and that’s why she was here. But if he wasn’t here, then…
She stepped forward, her hand balled up into a fist. She stared intensely at Igor, furrowing her brow. “Send me back.”
A dead silence.
Margaret scoffed, turning back to Igor. “The contract.”
“I mean, as nice as it is to see you all again, I really shouldn’t be here –”
Igor interrupted her, a wicked grin on his face. “No, my dearest, you should not be here at this moment.”
Kotone took a deep breath and closed her eyes, preparing to once again feel her skin turn to stone and to return to…
She could feel herself shaking.
“You should be home,” Elizabeth voiced.
Home? What was home? There were only two items in this subset: her childhood home, with her parents and Makoto, or the Iwatodai dorms. Both seemed improbable. Besides, she belonged elsewhere.
Margaret, in contrast to Elizabeth, had a deep scowl on her face. She sighed and turned her back to Kotone, a hand on her hip.
“What about Theo?”
“We’ve already decided. I’ll go look for him. I will… figure something out,” Elizabeth replied. Kotone knew she herself was a pretty positive person, but in comparison, Elizabeth seemed… perhaps a bit unhinged. Then again, Elizabeth wasn’t really a person, was she? She knew Theo definitely had emotions though, he could feel sadness and pain, so maybe this was just Elizabeth’s way of coping with her brother’s disappearance? Kotone was no stranger to coping mechanisms.
“So… I’ll just wait here then?” Kotone squinted. “Shouldn’t I go back to like, protect the Earth from destruction?”
“Fortunately for you, we believe Theodore is taking care of that,” Margaret replied over her shoulder. “As for how… Elizabeth will be figuring that out.”
Imagining Theodore, something started to bubble in her chest. Kotone looked down at her shoes - somehow, impeccably clean despite everything. Maybe she shouldn’t be so surprised. It’s not like she had been doing much walking.
“To answer your question, Kotone, you may not stay here,” Margaret finally turned around. “The side effects of a human overstaying their welcome in the Velvet Room is unprecedented.”
The brown-haired girl looked away. “I’m not sure I understand, then. Where will I go?”
&
2011.31.03 Morning
“To be honest, I thought my body had decomposed by now…”
Kotone looked down at her definitely not-decomposed body, covered by the light blue blanket so kindly provided by the hospital. She had felt a pang of guilt when she first woke up for taking up an entire hospital room.
She wasn’t so surprised when she looked back up to Margaret, who remained scowl-faced. “Do you remember everything I told you?”
She frowned. “Yes.”
“So repeat it.”
“I’m going back to the Iwatodai dorms as a first-year university student. A year has passed since my death. Nobody remembers me, nor do they remember the whole… end of the world situation. No shadows, no Tartarus, no Nyx.”
The custodial staff at the hospital had kept her room very clean. The metal rod holding up her IV bag reflected a diverging version of the disreputable sight that was her face. Her hair was firstly unbrushed and tangled, but more importantly had grown. Where it used to touch her shoulders, it now reached just below her chest. It lost some colour.
“Very good,” Margaret replied, the same cold gaze in her eyes. Kotone would have thought that a multi-dimensional being would be understanding that it wasn’t Kotone’s fault that Margaret’s brother decided to go AWOL, but alas.
&
2011.31.03 Afternoon
Sure enough, Margaret had kept to her promise that ‘she would see Kotone be discharged in the next hour’. Despite her attitude, she provided Kotone with a small suitcase with her old belongings and some pocket money. In the bathroom mirror, Kotone noticed that her clothes didn’t fit her too well anymore; whether that was because she got taller, or lost weight, she didn’t know. For a second she imagined asking Yukari out to the strip mall; go window-shopping like the once used to. But… she had to let this hypothetical go.
She wasn’t sure how exactly the Velvet Room had managed all of this; from convincing the nurses to keep her body alive in a comatose state for the past year, down to allowing Kotone to return to her old dorm, there was definitely something bizarre about this whole situation. People didn’t just come back to life. Maybe she was dreaming? Well, it would have probably been somewhat simple to explain to the hospital to keep her on life support – it wasn’t like they could just kill her, right? But how did the Velvet Room manage to make everyone forget about what happened in 2009?
Standing in front of the dorm’s entrance, Kotone rolled her shoulders back and took a deep breath in. It had been a while, hadn’t it? Margaret didn’t even let her in on the details of her old friends. Just that she’d have to create – no, recreate her bonds with them. Fine by her; there were more important things to think about right now than her social life. She had other tasks to take care of: physical therapy, catching up on the last year of high school and generally reintegrating back into society. Most importantly, she was to report to the Velvet Room once daily to aid in finding Theodore. Somehow…
Perhaps the strangest thing about coming back – apart from the resurrection itself – was the fact that she still felt her personae in her heart. She supposed they would of course still be there since they were a part of her, but she didn’t need them if there was no more Tartarus. Right?
Slowly, and somewhat painfully, Kotone made her way up the stairs. When she opened the front door, which was heavier than she remembered, she was met with a familiar yet lonesome sight. The lounge remained mostly unchanged. She could see dust particles floating in the air. This atmosphere reminded her of the very first night she arrived here. She supposed it being a Thursday afternoon, everybody would be at school or practice or… no, wait, that wasn’t right…
If it was a year later, then it would be… they’d be… well, she wasn’t so sure. Would they even still be living in the same dorm? Ken, sure, considering he was just entering – no, he would be starting his second year of high school.
Kotone couldn’t help but furrow her brow. If she was starting university in a few days, then why was she still allowed to live in the dorms? What sort of mind control did the Velvet Room have on the real world enough to make this possible? Or maybe… Iwatodai was renting this space out to the university instead, since the SEES members grew up?
More importantly, she couldn’t figure out the reason why the attendants and Igor would go through so much trouble for her. To change the whole world for her. She thought for a second maybe it was because of her sacrifice, like this was some sort of reward, some prize, but… but for now, it didn’t feel like that. As Kotone scanned the room, she realised that her return to life felt more like purgatory than anything else.
She dropped her gaze down to her suitcase. She’d have to muster up the strength and courage to bring it up two flights of stairs. Oh. Is this why her personae were still with her? She almost let out a chuckle, but instead decided to save her energy. Motivated, she walked towards the staircase, dragging the suitcase behind her. She knew it wasn’t that heavy, maybe ten kilograms max, but considering she hadn’t lifted anything since dying-but-not-really-dying, it proved to be more difficult than first imagined.
Okay, she could do this. It was thirteen steps. Then she could take a short break, maybe buy herself a Mad Bull from the vending machine. Then another thirteen steps. Then maybe she could lay in her bed, take a nap even.
She tightened her ponytail and stretched her arms back and forth. Arm stretches were often overlooked and underutilised by even the most experienced of athletes. With a long exhale, she held onto the banister as tightly as she could and began lifting the suitcase up. She could already feel beads of sweat decorate her forehead, but that was fine! These were just the consequences of a good exercise. Getting the suitcase up to the second step, where it was now balanced between her calf and the next step, had been a success. Now she just needed to repeat this a few more times, find a rhythm and a routine. She lifted it up once more, but was startled by a voice behind her before she could place the suitcase down.
“Um, hey, do you need some help?”
One time, decades ago, she and her brother had been playing outside in the garden. Makoto had dared her to climb their mother’s so greatly-prized walnut tree. Its branches and leaves shadowed the rest of the flowers. But she didn’t let the formidable height of this tree stop her from trying anyway; she had always been a daredevil at heart. The climb started off fine; she was used to the smaller, shorter trees at the school’s playground, not to mention the actual playground equipment itself. Perhaps the most important difference between those trees and the one she was climbing, though, was the size of the branches. When she put her foot down onto a branch, expecting it to resist her weight, it instead snapped in half, sending her tumbling through leaves and flowers and eventually ending up on the pavement, concussed and 500 yen poorer. This led to her first ever experience in the emergency department and what seemed to be a lifetime of teasing from her brother.
Kotone dizzied herself by turning around and lost her footing on the third step. In an attempt to rescue herself, her hands autonomously reached for the banister. Before she could latch on, the suitcase itself lost balance and began falling down, bringing her down along with it in the process.
While her tailbone hurt like never before, this was nothing in comparison to the walnut tree incident of ‘98. Also, it had been a while since her body felt much of anything, so she supposed she couldn’t really complain.
She had the intention to swear but no sound came out. She looked up to find a worried Yukari. She sat there gaping for an inappropriate amount of time, but it couldn’t be helped. She felt somewhat starstruck. Yukari barely looked any different, but she was taller, stood up straighter. She was wearing a pink cardigan, but not the one from when they first met. Expensive jeans. New belt. And where she once wore her hair loose and messy, it had now been straightened to perfection.
“Are you okay?” Her voice echoed.
Kotone bit her lip and made a rather pathetic attempt to stand up. She cleared her throat. “Yeah, I’ve had worse.” A brief memory of a steel Gigas popped into her head. Kotone extended her hand. “I’m Shiomi Kotone.” Just because she had been dead for a year didn’t mean she forgot how to socialise.
“Oh,” Yukari seemed somewhat startled, or at the very least weirded out. “...Takeba Yukari.” She slightly furrowed her eyebrows.
Kotone smiled until her lips couldn’t stretch any farther. “Nice to meet you.”
And while Yukari grinned in return, it didn’t seem to be as friendly as it once was. When they first met each other, Yukari was so outgoing that it caught her off-guard. But now, though friendly, Yukari met her eyes with a look that conveyed suspicion more than annoyance. Maybe she remembered Kotone.
Yukari’s eyes flickered between the stairs and Kotone’s luggage. “Are you, like, new here? Transferring to Gekkoukan?”
Guess not.
Kotone’s eyes widened, unsure if her friend (was that the right word?) was serious. “No. College.”
“Iwatodai?”
Kotone nodded.
“First year?”
Kotone nodded.
Yukari looked away and rubbed her hand over her arm. “Uh, okay. I didn’t think they were letting people apply to this dorm but,” she began mumbling, quickening her speech. “I guess the more the merrier.” Her gaze turned back to Kotone. “Let me help you with your suitcase; I can give you a tour on the way, too. The girls’ rooms are all the way on the third floor. So annoying, right?”
She grabbed Kotone’s suitcase with one hand. “Wow, with the way you were heaving this thing up the stairs I thought you had like, bricks in here or something,” she chuckled, easily pulling the suitcase up the stairs behind her.
Kotone flushed, but followed Yukari up the stairs anyway. She listened to her friend’s familiar explanation of the layout of the dorm, how she could shake the vending machines in a certain way on Fridays to get free drinks, the best time to shower and so on.
When they reached the third floor, Kotone was only slightly surprised that she would be occupying the same room as before. She wondered for a brief second what strings the Velvet Room pulled for this reality. Before unlocking the door, she turned around to a straight-faced Yukari.
“Do you need anything else?”
Kotone’s throat felt dry. “Can I ask… who else lives here?”
Yukari looked right towards the rest of the hallway. “Well, me, for one. Right. Next. Door.” Kotone thought she was about to roll her eyes with the way she punctuated her sentence. Yukari continued, “Another first year across the hall from you. There’s a high schooler downstairs, but he keeps to himself, so don’t worry. And uh… ugh.”
Kotone raised a brow.
This time, Yukari did not hesitate to roll her eyes. “There’s this pervert downstairs, too,” she explained, shaking her head.
“Is he a university student too?”
Yukari snorted. “Yeah, right, as if. He just like, works. I don’t know why she let him stay here.” Kotone could only imagine that Yukari was referring to Mitsuru. Yukari sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Um, yeah, that’s about it. Anything else?”
Kotone pursed her lips and thought of ways to develop the conversation. She could ask about the university itself, or maybe about what Yukari was studying or how she had been this past year. Instead, she shook her head. “That’s all right. Thanks.”
The other girl gave her a small smile. Her eyebrows shot up quickly. “Oh! Gimme your phone so I can put in my number.”
Kotone blinked.
“You know, in case you need anything?”
“I don’t have. I mean.” She looked around. “I lost my phone.”
It only made sense for Margaret to forget that a cell phone was a vital item in the human world. For a second, she thought to herself that Theo wouldn’t have forgotten.
“Uh, okay, well.”
“I’m going to buy a new one.”
“Sure. I’ll see you around.”
“Bye,” Kotone called as Yukari walked away. She felt herself her shoulders drop down immediately, as she let out a breath that she didn’t even know she was holding in. Kotone thought she was good at keeping secrets.
She spun around. There was nothing off about her room. A slight must lingered in the air. Obviously, nobody had been here to clean it in a while. Kotone stepped in, running a finger over the top of her minifridge. She wiped off her hand on her shirt, leaving a slight grey mark on the orange material. With a sigh, she knocked her suitcase onto its back in the middle of the room and kneeled down. When she opened it, she found her clothes neatly folded into little squares, which she began to take out one by one and lay on her bed. Once the layer of clothing was removed from the suitcase, she could spot a few of her toiletries and some accessories. Six silver bobby pins glistened even under the room’s dim light, and she quickly scooped them into her hands. She sat up and turned to stand in front of her mirror. It reflected someone she barely recognised.
&
2011.31.03 Evening
The strip mall was busier than Kotone had ever seen it. Mothers were running after their children, housewives were discussing the latest vegetable price increases at Junes, boyfriends and girlfriends were holding hands. Everyone was… happy? Maybe happy wasn’t the right word, but they were… normal. Content. The air smelled like a mixture of foods, from noodles fried in chilli oil, to sugar-sweet-like cotton candy, to bitter hints of alcohol from two old men sharing a beer on a bench.
After purchasing a new cell phone (and debating whether or not it would be wise to input everyone’s numbers in already), Kotone decided she needed new clothes. Usually when she had this much money, she would be in the Velvet Room crafting up new personas or at the police station bartering the officer for weapons. It felt strange, but good, to be able to just spend this money on herself. She knew she probably had better things to worry about – Theo – but the thought of showing up to university tomorrow in her old clothes, all too loose now, was unbearable. Kotone was, after all, still a young girl.
When she returned to the dorm, she was once again greeted with an unfamiliar silence. There was no one to greet her hello. It felt chilly. She bowed her head down and continued up the stairs, this time more mindful to be careful with the steps.
The second floor was empty and dusty. Where Kotone once used to moan about the sound of Akihiko’s fists pounding against his punching bag, her ears now yearned for the sound. She glanced away from the hallway and made her way up. Walking down, she could hear a faint clacking of a keyboard coming. Was it Fuuka? Or Yukari? Were they working on university assignments already? Induction hadn’t even begun.
Kotone stepped closer to Fuuka’s door. Maybe she should knock and introduce herself. Or maybe she was too busy. Still, it felt rude not to.
She lifted her arm into the air, but before her fist could make contact with the door, it instead flung open. Below her eyeline stood a sleepy Fuuka, holding some sheets of paper.
“Oh… I thought I heard someone out here,” she said quietly with a small smile.
“I’m so sorry!” Kotone said, taking a few steps back. “I just wanted to say hello.”
“You must be new here.” Fuuka walked out of the doorway and headed towards the common area of the third floor. Kotone wasn’t sure whether or not she should follow her, but the other girl continued speaking. “My name is Yamagishi Fuuka. It’s nice to meet you.” She bowed curtly.
“Shiomi Kotome,” Kotone replied, returning the bow. “What are you doing?”
“Oh…” Fuuka looked down at her papers. “I was going to copy these fliers and pin them up at school tomorrow.”
“Iwatodai College?”
“Yeah!” They reached the end of the hallway, the common area, where a printer now stood. It looked expensive. Mitsuru must have ordered it to ensure – wait, no. Why would Mitsuru care about the dorm’s grades anymore?
Fuuka slid in a sheet and pressed a few buttons. “Are you starting there too?”
Kotone grinned. “Yup! Philosophy.”
She didn’t have much of a say in what subject she studied. Margaret seemed a bit rushed in her preparations. Honestly, though, Kotone hadn’t given it much thought since before she died, and even back then she had better things to think about. But she supposed philosophy wasn’t that bad, and it may even suit her, considering all the conversations she had had with Aigis about humanity.
“Well, I don’t know if you’d be interested in this, but…” Fuuka blushed, her head down and she reached for a fresh-hot copy of the flier, offering it to Kotone. “I’m starting a tech club.”
“Oh, yeah,” Kotone took the flier, smiling down at the cute graphic design of a laptop with big eyes and a crooked smile. She stopped herself from saying, I remember. Instead she looked into Fuuka’s expectant eyes. “I‘m always up for learning something new. Maybe you can teach me how to stop getting malware every time I illegally download a movie.”
Fuuka giggled, turning back to the printer. Unlike Yukari, Fuuka looked like she always did. Her hair was a little messy, still short, and her posture was still small and fidgety. Bird-like. No. Baby-bird-like.
“I don’t know if I can help you with that, but I hope you find some time to join.”
“Of course,” Kotone smiled until she felt her eyes squint. The conversation quickly fizzled out once Kotone realized that she was far more tired than she had thought and excused herself to bed. It was only nine.
As she washed her face with warm water, she thought of her past self. One year didn’t seem like a long time, yet a lot had changed. Kotone didn’t know whether these changes came from time’s passing or from Velvet Room trickery. Obviously, certain things about her appearance like her hair and her physique were down to biology. She’d have to get back in shape. Just walking felt tiring enough. Unfortunately, there was no more Tartarus for easy(ish) cardio exercise. Maybe Iwatodai University gave out free gym memberships to students?
Kotone scoured inside her toiletries bag and pulled out a pack of cotton pads and a small bottle of micellar water. She flipped the open bottle over a pad and let it sit for two seconds. She pressed the wet pad over her right eye and stared at her reflection. For some reason, she looked less friendly than she remembered. She curled her lips upwards, but her smile seemed different.
That was fine. It was easy to make new friends, especially when the new people who you aim to befriend are in fact your old friends. She’d just have to be her old, regular, charismatic self.
She flipped the pad, soaked it, and placed it on her other eye. She looked tired. She was tired. Before, she would manage to pack two social links, a Theo trip and an arcade game trip all in one day. All she did today (apart from resurrect) was go shopping. She supposed she just needed to rebuild her stamina.
Kotone splashed water on her face once more and discarded the cotton pad into the wastebin. Moments later, she melted into her bed.